


i'll wait by the backstage door

by robmit



Category: Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll (TV 2015)
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, F/F, Lesbianism, alcohol mention, canon is a suggestion and not even a great one, it is not spicy please do not interpret it as such, lesbian and bisexual solidarity in the form of forehead kisses, this is very not straight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28121082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robmit/pseuds/robmit
Summary: Gigi finds herself at another one of Davvy's performances, and every confusing thought she's had about her identity starts to click into place.Rambles about disaster sapphics falling for each other and realizing things about each other and being there for each other. I love these two so much and wanted to almost "re-do" the way canon introduced them, because it was very... lacking. So this takes place a week after their first meeting. Named after a Fiona apple song because you know, I just HAD to.
Relationships: Gigi/Davvy O'Dell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	i'll wait by the backstage door

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be completely honest with you- I'm not the MOST familiar with canon, although I have watched these two's episodes. However, that being said... enjoy! Hopefully!

I’m at Davvy’s gig again.

It’s the band’s last song- a shame indeed, I know that everyone here could put the rest of their lives aside and watch her perform for hours more. The band starts up and she swings into action. I’ll admit that usually watching other people perform leaves me jealous. I start to think about the ways I’d emulate what they’re doing and comparing myself to them. Even when I saw her the first time, that was the lens through which I watched, but now that’s faded into a comfortable buzz of appreciation. Truly, Davvy O’Dell is a force to be reckoned with. 

I’m completely sober and yet looking at her makes me dizzy- a frenetic energy in my mind bouncing every which way, a planet thrown out of orbit onto an infinitely more interesting path. I set my drink aside and give her all my attention- this performance is what I came to the bar for anyways, although I told my dad that I was just going out to get some fresh air. Oh well, I doubt he’ll even notice I’m gone.

I didn’t tell Davvy I’d be here- it would have been an awkward conversation, I’m sure, and really I’m content just to watch her sing again. So when she makes direct eye contact with me about halfway into a song that I’m embarrassed not to know, it catches me off guard. I give her an offhanded wave and try to look nonchalant, all the time knowing that my face is definitely flushed. Why on earth am I trying to impress her when we both know that we’re attracted to each other? Even I don’t understand my own logic. Seriously, maybe I’m overthinking it- we make eye contact and I smile at Davvy as the last chords of the song play and she places the mic back on its stand. That’s it for the night, I guess.

I let my eyes linger on her and her backing band for a second more before I stand up and put my coat on, turning around. Hyper-aware that my attempts to be nonchalant are failing entirely, I give a nod of goodbye to the bartender and make a run for the door.

It’s significantly colder than when I arrived, and my thin coat isn’t doing much good about the sudden onslaught of snow that is attacking my facial features and ungloved hands at the moment. It’s the type of sub-zero chill that’s accompanied by a strong wind, which really doesn’t make things much better, and I stand there in the doorway for an unreasonably long time trying to catch my bearing. My mind is whirring with an unfortunate combination of “wow, I just saw a beautiful girl perform and I have no idea how to talk to her again” and “DAMN, I am really uncomfortably cold at the moment”. 

Suddenly a figure brushes by me. Startled, I move out of the way and am greeted with a distinctive laugh and Davvy’s hand lightly pressed against my shoulder. Well, well, well, looks like this awkward encounter isn’t over yet. Just my luck.

“Oh- sorry Davvy, I was about to leave. Just got sidetracked for a moment being… cold, yknow?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of miserable out here- pretty, though.” Her eyes rest on me during the last part of that sentence, and I hope it’s not a coincidence. “You should’ve texted me you’d be here! I would have brought you onstage and we could’ve sang together.”

“Wait, really? That would be like a dream come true.” I don’t mention that I’ve already made a list in my head of songs we could sing together, and imagined every single one of them. 

“Yeah, of course! Why didn’t you let me know? I was absolutely stoked to see you in the audience and we could’ve made plans.”

Ahhh. How do I word this? “You’re a busy woman, I’m sure you’ve got things to do and people you’d like to see.” 

“I do.” She gives me a grin that’s half sweet sincerity and half playful exasperation, and inches closer to me ever so slightly, and it gives me the confidence to say something that might be REALLY stupid.

“But, hey- the night’s not over. Are you free? I haven’t really got any other plans.” I don’t mention that the reason for that is that I planned to spend the rest of the night thinking about her performance- it would come off a little too strong, I think. 

“Of course I am.” 

The snow whirls around both of our heads and I watch as a flake after flake lands on her, melting almost immediately and giving her a soft wintery glow. It’s rather impressive when someone can look ethereal even in the middle of a New York winter. 

We walk in silence. Without thinking about it, I take my hand and rest it against hers in a way that I’m hoping is just inconspicuous enough that it isn’t quite interpreted as hand holding, more like… hand contact? The hand version of eye contact. Nothing more than that.

She, misinterpreting my genius plan in the best way possible, grasps my hand and squeezes my fingers, giving me an eye roll. “What are you doing?”

Might as well be honest. “I’m terribly cold, and I don’t know how to act around pretty girls.” She laughs, and that’s response enough for me to know that she feels the same way. 

We walk hand in hand down the icy streets. I have the sudden awareness that we greatly resemble a couple at this very moment- not just because we’re so close together, it’s in the meticulous rhythm of our footsteps one after the other in the snow and the bright charisma of her smile every time I steal a glimpse. 

“Alright, it’s the third door on the left right over here.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Oh?” I think she’s pleasantly surprised. I don’t blame her for thinking that I was somewhat uninterested- after all, I did profess that I was entirely not into girls after we kissed for about five seconds. But the past week has had me recanting that statement over and over in my head, hoping for some way to tell Davvy that without sounding… I don’t know, fake? Like I don’t understand my own feelings? Like I’m using her?

I am lulled out of my rather concerning thought process by her taking her hand out of mine- she does it gently but it’s still rather disappointing, as I am cold and touch starved- and opening the door to her apartment. We are greeted with both a rush of warm air and an older man standing in the doorway eating a packet of chips. I wave at him, because it seems like the right thing to do, somehow, and attempt to open the second door before I realize there’s a code Davvy has to enter.

“Nervous?” She half-whispers it at me and winks, which is so ridiculously charming that I might fall over. I don’t even need to answer. 

The door clicks open and we leave the man and his chips behind. 

Davvy’s apartment is on the second floor, so we take the stairs instead of the elevator. She’s a few steps in front of me, which gives me a moment to decompress and think about what on earth I’m going to say when we get to her room. I’m certain that I’ll lose most of my ability to form coherent sentences once we’re alone, but I have a funny feeling that there’s something specific I want to say to her.

There’s something so instinctive and gentle about looking at her. It makes things click in my brain, years of holding myself back washed away in seconds. The hesitation is still there, and it’s stalled me making any serious moves, but I feel more comfortable around her than most of the people in my life right now. Although, considering who they are, maybe the bar isn’t that high.

We’re in her apartment now. I’m a tense, anxious mess of a person who is definitely attracted to the person next to her and even more definite about the fact that she has no idea what to do about that. I sit on her couch and shuffle over to make room for her, laying back and staring up at the ceiling so that I can avoid making eye contact.

An insistent thought bubbles up into my consciousness as she sits down, resting her head on my shoulder. My words come out all fast and scattered, with a brazen confidence that I know will wear off in only a few seconds. “Ever since we met up last week I’ve had this feeling that I tried desperately to ignore about you. I mean, it’s about more than you, you’re just the medium through which- oh, no, that sounds awful. I think that you made it clear enough in my mind that I know myself more than I say I do, and claiming to be anything other than my authentic self will just hurt me in the long run. But- it’s been years upon years of thinking about girls and thinking about boys and not connecting the two together in any such way, and I don’t even know why it never occurred to me that I might be- well, I mean, it’s not written in stone. I don’t know. You lit something up inside of me and I pulled back because I was afraid of it. The words are more difficult than the feelings, because they carry so much more weight. And there’s no way to say this lightly but I think that I’m… well…” 

“...Bisexual?” She gets it out before I can. “I’m sorry- I shouldn’t have-”

“No, you’re right.” There’s relief soaring through me that I don’t quite understand. I pause, letting the tension fall off my shoulders like a weight being let down to the ground for the first time in decades. “Thank you for that. Hearing someone else say it just solidifies in my mind that I’m right about this.” For the first time since I started speaking, I look back up at her and realize there’s tears in both of our eyes. We hold eye contact for a solid few seconds and the reality of what I’ve just said hits me. 

“I’m proud of you, Gigi.” Her tone is confident and ever so sincere. “I can tell how difficult that was.”

“It was nearly impossible,” I say. “Not even sure how I got that one out- I wasn’t even planning on it. Just a spur of the moment thing… you inspire that kind of spontaneity in me, I suppose.” 

“That doesn’t make it any less important.” She brings her head down so it’s sitting in my lap and I allow myself one moment of oh-my-god-pretty-girl before I start paying attention to what she’s saying again. “I cried and locked myself in the bathroom for almost an hour after I came out for the first time.”

“Speaking of which, your bathroom has a lock, right?” We both dissolve into laughter, but it’s true that I feel simultaneously like crying and jumping for joy. 

“It does! Just for situations like this one.”

“Well, you’re a very considerate host.” I lean down and kiss her on the forehead, and we linger there in that position for a while. It’s so tender I can hardly describe it.

“You know,” I say, sitting back up, “until last week I was convinced that I couldn’t BE someone who likes women. As if there was some mysterious list of criteria that I didn’t meet.” 

“Oh, I get you. I’ve been out for almost a decade now and there’s still moments of impostor syndrome. It gets easier, though, don’t you worry.” 

I sigh. “Knowing me, there’s a chance that I’ll dive headfirst back into the closet at any given moment. That’s what I did when we kissed last week.”

“I didn’t want to make any assumptions, but I was wondering if that might be the case.” 

“The scenario was just so… bizarre? I felt like everything I did with you would be picked apart by every single person I talked to about it and that they’d judge who I am based on that. And for some of them, I KNOW it’s true. I’ve tried to explain this kind of thing to my dad before, but he seems convinced that it’s a concept that exists entirely separately from anyone he knows in real life.”

Davvy shrugs. “It’s easy to think of gay people only in a hypothetical sense if you haven’t met any. But, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, you do NOT give off straight energy, so I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“REALLY?” I don’t know how to feel about that one. “I honestly don’t know what that means, but thanks… I think? Was it the fact that I forget how to speak the moment that I start talking to you?” 

“...That doesn’t hurt. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I can read people pretty well. My first impressions are rarely wrong.” 

“What did you think about me when we first met?” I’m sure this will be at least somewhat insulting, considering that I came off very… intriguingly… that night.

“I thought you needed to get away from other people telling you who you should be, and I still think that’s true. If you’re going to get with a woman because someone else tells you it’ll benefit you, there’s a lack of understanding that goes beyond orientation.”

“Trust me, I know. Had a couple of vicious arguments with my family about that one. But I promise you that this is real- more real than I could articulate last time, because I was so caught up in myself and my own expectations. I was ignorant- I won’t deny that.” I pause and gather my next words carefully this time, trying to sum up a lifetime of confusion in just a few sentences. “To be honest, me liking girls was always kind of hidden in plain sight. I’ve had LGBTQ+ friends and family for my whole life, I just thought that they existed on some different plane of reality from me. I think I saw that their experiences were always coated with a little bit of pain and lack of empathy from other people, and it scared me. Plus, any depiction of women loving women in the media was, well… inaccurate, to say the least.”

“Tell me about it.” She cringes. “People are somehow unable to see us as multifaceted creatures that do more than stare into each others’ eyes longingly in period dramas. There’s the oversexualized side of it too, which makes even LESS sense. I just… we can exist in the in-between space of that spectrum, where we’re real people with real thoughts and feelings and actions.”

“We are,” I say, “and I’m still unlearning practically everything.”

We sit in that silence for some amount of time I can’t put a name to. All the while, I’m looking at her and counting my lucky stars that I somehow found a person like Davvy to have in my life. Her every word just makes me more sure of myself. Of course, this isn’t some lifelong relationship that we’ve embarked upon, but it doesn’t have to be. We are simply crossing paths for a moment- hers far further along than mine, but going in the same general direction- and both becoming better for it.

What am I going to do after tonight? I’m already sort of kind of in a relationship that I only have like 12 doubts about, which, for the record, is not that bad, and I still feel like Davvy deserves better than me. I’ll end up going home to a group of people full of questions and not a lot of empathy, triumphant that they were right about a situation that doesn’t even involve them. There will have to be justification and reintroductions and labels and labels and LABELS that I’m not quite comfortable sharing yet.

But for now, there’s a woman in my arms and she’s looking at me like none of that matters. The sky is dark and the neon lights of her apartment are defining her beautiful features in a way that feels at once like home and brand-new. There will be no more thoughts about tomorrow, no more thoughts about other people, no more thoughts about anything that doesn’t have to do with us, and here, and now. I can feel us both falling asleep on each other and it’s lovely and comforting and so, so safe. The world falls away and somehow I am more sure of myself than I’ve ever been.


End file.
